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The Vita Is Dead; Long Live The Vita - PS Post

Why I Chose To Republish...

Not only did this article begin my proper writings about PlayStation, it also let me celebrate the PlayStation Vita, a system some love to hate, and others simply love. At the same time, I managed to appreciate two of my biggest inspirations: Greg Miller and Colin Moriarty, the two people who got my into the PS nation, and persuaded me to join Vita Island.

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The Vita may be one of the most polarising video game
consoles ever created. Owners see it as a wonderful, incredible, inspiring
gateway into PlayStation; people on the outside simply see it as a mistake.

This is what fascinates me about the system. What failed?
What went so wrong that the overall outlook from the general public became something
of “Oh, that? It’s just a suped-up PSP.” I don’t care if Sony killed the Vita,
I don’t care if people think that it’s dead. I own one: and it’s glorious.

As you may or may not know, I bought my Vita in June this
year. I’m one of the late adopters; the hangers on to a system that was, to
many people, dead before it was ever really alive. But that doesn’t matter to
the owners, the hardest of the hardcore PlayStation fans who will do anything to
support the company that they love.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t buy a Vita because I want to
support Sony – I bought it because of two people: Colin Moriarty and Greg
Miller. Those who have followed my writings for a while will know that I give
them as the constant reason for my getting into the games industry, in whatever
way I have. You probably also know that they are famous for PlayStation coverage,
specifically Podcast Beyond and, now, PS I Love You XOXO. Their constant
billing of the Vita as a system that mattered, and one that needed to be
experienced to be truly understood convinced me that I had to try it.

This internal decision making happened a long time ago;
before I even purchased a PS4 (again, from the recommendation of Greg and
Colin). I’d never been one for handhelds, but the Vita looked great, and Colin
and Greg said it was great – so I jumped.

It was one of the better decisions I’ve made. Not only does
the Vita have an incredible library that gifts you a spectrum of games from the
blockbuster’s like Call Of Duty, to the obscure things that probably shouldn’t
be video games (Little Britain: The Game, anyone?)but it has one of the best
libraries for indie games out there (ignoring the PC). And this is testament to
Sony’s support of the system: whether people believe it to be there or not.
Maybe Vita doesn’t get the biggest games all year round, but it receives new
games each and every week, and, sometimes, this can produce a gem of a game.

On Twitter I asked for reasons why people love the Vita. Martin Blyth replied, saying that “it's
the perfect place to experience indie titles and to support the devs fleshing
out the ideas.” I couldn’t agree more.

Sure, there are problems. While Sony supports the people playing
on Vita through the game releases, they don’t tell the mainstream about it: and
this is what leads some people to infer that they killed their own system – a view
which I don’t necessarily disagree with.

But – and you’re seeing this in action right now – the biggest
downfall of the Vita is how you describe why it just works; why it just makes
sense. As someone who has played the
Vita, it’s incredibly hard to put into words why you should play it. And I think that, undeniably, is the biggest
problem.

The general populous need a reason for buying something:
whatever that something may be. Money’s tight for most people, and things like
games consoles are just frills that can be lived without. Because it’s so hard
to say why exactly the Vita is a must buy for fans of video games beyond just
those few words, it becomes nigh-on impossible to get people to see why they
should spend any money at all on it.

But, rest assured, you should. And maybe, just maybe, you –
unlike me – will be able to put why you love that little system into words. I
can’t, Sony couldn’t; but maybe you can.